Managing fungi in the orchard

The fourth chapter of The
Holistic Orchard was
mostly about what can go wrong in the orchard and how to prevent bugs
and diseases from ruining your crop. I'm going to skip over the
insect information since it was pretty mainstream, and instead give you
a rundown on Phillips' more unique recommendations for managing fungal
disease.

Once the fungus has a
real foothold on your tree, holistic prevention
techniques have failed and you're stuck either throwing up your hands
and calling the year a loss (like I did with our peach brown
rot two years ago),
or using harmful chemicals. But it's also possible to plan ahead
and block pathogenic fungi from successfully overwintering and/or
infecting the tree in the first place. Techniques we can all get
behind include boosting the health of the tree with proper nutrition so
its immune system is able to fight off that initial infection, and
helping leaves decompose as quickly as possible in the fall so the
fungi can't survive until spring.

The last item on the
list --- neem oil --- is the one Phillips swears by the most, and the
one that I think is closest to an allopathic medicine. (In other
words, I think it's a bit harsh on the ecosystem to be used
preventatively.) Like other oils used to kill and deter pests,
neem oil is likely to harm untargeted insects, and can even damage the
tree itself if sprayed on too thickly at the wrong time of year.
I'd put neem oil at about the same level as Bt --- if you're
comfortable with using one, you probably won't mind using the other.

I'd be curious to hear how
you felt about this spray-based approach to tree health. There
was a lot of other fascinating information in this chapter too, like
how to mix fruit trees with grass without starving the tree roots, so
feel free to leave your comments on those tidbits as well.

Next Wednesday, we'll be
moving into the second half of the book, which profiles each type of
fruit tree in a mouth-watering but still educational way. Chapter
five covers apples and pears, and since I've written about disease-resistant
apple varieties (and a lot of other apple-related information)
lately, I'll be focusing in on the pears. I hope you'll read
along and chime in with your own pear experiences.

The
Weekend Homesteader
starts with basics so you don't become overwhelmed during your first
forays into self-sufficiency.

Want
to be notified when new comments are posted on this page? Click on the
RSS button after you add a comment to subscribe to the comment feed, or simply check the box beside "email replies to me" while writing your comment.

Effects of these preparations on beneficial arthropods are generally considered to be minimal.

(the word preparations refers to the many other compounds related to azadirachtin that can be found in and extracted from the bark and leaves of the neem tree)

And it is good to keep in mind that neem oil also works as a insect repellant, not just a toxin. There are many different chemicals in neem oil.

Compared to other pesticides that last much longer in the environment and are much more lethal, this seems a relatively harmless choice.

Why not try it on some of your trees next year, see if it makes a difference?

A practical difficulty with all these natural products is that their composition will vary per batch, year and/or place of origin. So it is hard to know how much you should use.

It would of course be nice to have an insecticide that only kills pests. But such an extremely specific material would probably be hard (and therefore expensive) to find. First you'd have to define what exactly you consider pests (which might vary depending on what kinds of plants you're growing). Then you'd have to find something that disturbs the metabolism of only the "bad" bugs, and in a rather fundamental way, so it is not easy to evolve resistance against it.

BTW, the term "allotropic" is commonly used by homeopaths to describe medications used in maintream medicine (i.e. stuff that is extensively tested and actually works). Compare that to the standard homeopathic practice of diluting stuff until the chance of finding a molecule of active ingredient in a bottle is practically zero, I'd prefer allotropic medicine!

It seems everything I've read about growing fruit in the orchard says you need to spray. There are organic sprays and Frankenstein sprays. Frankly, both scare me despite what "science" says. (Sound science gave us DDT, if you remember ...) I'd be curious to know from either your experience, or the experience of others who might comment, if anyone has experience growing good fruit without spraying. Anyone?

Dan --- This is an excellent question, and gets to the heart of what I was going to say in response to Roland. (Basically, if I can get away with spraying nothing at all, that's what I want to do!)

I think that on an industrial scale, you probably can't get away with not spraying, mostly because the American public no longer understands blemishes. My father likes to tell me about a peach orchard he worked at as a young man --- they didn't spray, and the peaches had worms in them. People simply expected that and worked around it.

But those of us who are growing fruit for personal consumption can decide where the balancing point between safe food and pretty food is for us. Some fruits are much easier to grow that way --- I see no reason to do anything except topdress and weed strawberries, blueberries, and raspberries. Similarly, Lee Reich reports that many of the unusual fruits (persimmons, pawpaws, etc.) that he grows don't need spraying, but they might not fit your palate. I don't have enough experience with conventional tree fruits yet to say the same, so hopefully others will chime in.

Here in the Netherlands you can find blackberries (rubus fruticosus) growing in the wild almost everywhere, without people caring for them. On the contrary, they can be hard to get rid of. They tolerate a wide range of soils and conditions.

It might be a good obstacle against deer as well. These plants tend to form dense clusters or hedges, and they have lots of thorns.

When I was little we used to go into the woods and eat the ripe berries right off the bush. The trick was finding one in an out-of-the-way spot that hadn't been stripped bare yet.

I'm having problems with how spraying that much can be called Holistic, no matter what the spray is. I am however glad to know of the options if I get ambitious with my trees (unlikely!)or if I get into a serious problem with them. Maybe I would do one or two sprays a year, on my dozen under-performing dwarf trees (the standards don't seem to need help from us at all.)

What I liked the most was learning about root systems and how grass affects everything else. We've been mowing under our trees for awhile and now I realize that's been bad for them! Too bad cuz it's so easy I plan to work on timing the one or two mows, and also adding different plantings.

In case you don't know, I live in C. Florida, and I grow things that "don't grow here".
Apples, old peaches, pears, apricots, plums, pomegranates.
I don't spray a single drop of pesticide or fungicide.
(Mildew, fireblight, stink bugs, and nematodes are the major things that hit my trees hard.)

A little back story.
Now I understand that this is not practical for most people:
I started out with " apples don't grow in Florida!"
Well, I wanted to grow my own!
So I went and ordered all the apple varieties in the catalogs, literally. (Over the years this gos for every fruit I listed up there)

Trial and error; half dead trees, no fruit..
Then, an apple!
Its how it went.

But the point is, that only the strongest survive, and That is what I grow. That is the price of not spraying.
It gos back to a time when you didn't have a crutch to prop up weak trees just because they had good fruit.
I suggest anyone looking to not spray, look for locale people who have blazed the trail before you, or do it yourself.
When your doing something in an unconventional way, it takes a little more effort to find out if its going to work.

Now don't think I have crappy, spotted brown fruit, and half dead scraggly trees.
I do work very hard to keep my trees healthy.
I prune them, thin fruit really hard. Have them on good roots. Keep them well fed with compost, so on.

Most of my trees fruit in the beginning or end of the year too, the fruit misses the peak bug activity. Stink bugs, the only big fruit pest I deal with, I can control some by planting disposable trap crops like beans and okra around my trees.

T, That's exactly my theory on dealing with fruit pests and disease --- figure out what your worst problems are and then act ruthlessly to only keep trees that are immune.

I'm really enjoyed all of your thoughtful comments in the last few months, but know that a lot of our non-comment-readers missed them. Any chance I could talk you into doing a guest post or two? This comment itself is almost a guest post! Other topics I'm interested in include: your techniques for pruning apples on larger rootstocks to a dwarf size; the disease and pest-free varieties you grow in Florida; and anything else along those lines!

Don't feel obliged, of course, but I think your wisdom would be much appreciated by a wider audience! If you're interested, drop me an email at anna@kitenet.net.